Survivors' executive producer Adrian Hodges looks back at the successful first year, and drops some hints about the future... Words: Paul Simpson

Are you pleased with the reaction to the show?

I am. If you're making a very high profile show for BBC One at 9 o'clock, they're obsessed with whether it's successful in the ratings, and I couldn't be more pleased with the fact we started well, we just about held in there in the middle, and we bounced back in the last two weeks. The fact we're up on an upward curve is very heartening indeed.

From what I've seen of the audience breakdown, we are attracting a much higher proportion of younger audiences than most of BBC One’s shows. It's really good to think that there's a new audience out there who very likely knew nothing at all of the original series.

How long were you preparing the show?

Everything about this version of Survivors has been quick. I really started work in September 2007, and I didn't finish writing the last episode till very late in August. It was certainly a question of making decisions quickly and hoping that you'd got the right ones.

I read Terry Nation's book very carefully, and I've read it again since, and I will read it again before I start working on the second series. There was a lot at the front of the book that I wanted to use directly or indirectly, and there was a lot in the second half that I wanted to use, but over a long period of time. The book becomes very elongated. There are loads of really great ideas and some things that are terribly relevant which I will be using as inspiration or directly, but probably not straightaway.

I always said that we would adapt the book where it would really work in the context of the show that I wanted to write. Some things are very much the same, as they are in the first episode of course. The Jimmy Garland stuff seemed to be a very good story, but we felt that there was more to be done with the people actually living in Waterhouse. I'm very interested by the notion of what would happen to children in this situation.

Are you going to return to that plotline?

There's a very strong chance that we will feature that character again, either in the context of Waterhouse or another context.

In the original novel it's trade union leader Arthur Wormley who sets up a community rather than a politician like Samantha...

The Arthur Wormley character, even the name, was redolent of that period in the 1970s when Nation was writing. The whole notion of a trade union leader commanding that much standing in society I'm afraid just isn't that much of a goer any more. But notions of rebuilding society are obviously central to any version of the future one wants to describe. I wanted to develop that with a character that was a little more torn and a little more sympathetic.

I'd seen one of the very young, but very promoted, government ministers on the News. They're in their late 30s, they must be as ambitious as hell, but they're still very young people. I thought it would be interesting to put a person like that in a position of extreme tension and decision making, and balance their own decency as a person with their own egoism as a politician. Like Terry Nation, I take a relatively dim view of politicians. Putting the amount of ego and self-love that any politician needs into a society where there are no holds barred any more struck me as interesting.

I wanted Samantha to have good arguments. When she comes to the house in the last episode and argues with Abby, she's right to some degree. She doesn't think Abby can look after them, and Abby promptly loses Naj which makes Samantha's point. Even if one doesn't agree with Samantha, I do think that we give her some sympathetic arguments that some people would say weren't entirely untrue.

Her deal with the criminal Dexter seems a bit glossed over...

There will be consequences of that further down the line. I think she is compromised deeply, but not in her own eyes. To her, she's taken a villain off the streets and turned him into one of her own, which she can control! It is part of her vanity that she thinks she can change him, that she's done something rather clever. I was thinking of the Americans in Iraq paying off all the various military groups and keeping their fingers crossed that they won't attack them in future.

Why did you effectively replace the original character of Jenny with Anya?

That was a genuine desire to do something of my own in that context. I wanted to pay proper tribute to Terry Nation and do my own things as well. I liked Jenny in the original; it was nothing to do with any kind of desire to shock by getting rid of a principal character, although that clearly was part of the consequences. But I couldn't see what I could add to that character that could make it more interesting than what it was originally.

I had a character in my head to play out over a longer period who would be much more tortured than Jenny, and Anya seemed to be the right person to do that. I also had the notion that one of them would fall in love with Tom, and that would be a very difficult and fraught relationship. I did particularly love the idea that what if the doctor in the book had another life? What would he – or indeed she by the time I finished – be feeling about this?

Tom Price is the most morally ambiguous character on the show...

I wanted him to remain a fascinating villain; is he our villain or is he going to turn on us in the end? Obviously his relationship with Anya is very key to that. I don't want to do anything as facile as saying he's just going to be a good guy now. He's going to stay what he is – he's never going to be what in his heart he knows he could have been.

He's not unintelligent, and he certainly means it when he says to Samantha that he thought she was going to judge him on what he could be, not what he was. He could have played it straight there, but he was never going to be a conventional team player. He's not above using violence when he thinks it's necessary.

What did you feel you needed to alter about Abby?

What I knew was absolutely right and unchangeable about the original novel and series is that Abby is the absolute moral compass of the show. If you make Abby morally ambiguous, then the whole thing will wobble off its axis. You need somebody who can carry you through.

The danger is that Abby can become a little glum and one-track compared with the other characters. I was very keen that because Julie has such warmth and strength as an actress, she had some fun as well. I wanted to allow her to develop as a character and be active as well as passive. She's part of an ensemble and I wanted Julie to feel like that; I didn't want her to feel like Mum all the time.

If we were an American series, we would park the subplot about Peter for four or six episodes at a time. Because of the accelerated nature of a British series, we do move a little quicker, but you can't do it all the time, because it would become too one-note. And she plays a crucial part in the laboratory plot, so there's another part for her to play too.

Is Sarah just a character who stands and waits?

I think she is a bit that. I quite liked the notion that there would be a character in there who would be rather weak and scared, but covers that with her selfishness and lack of moral scruple. There's quite a valuable role for someone who isn't that heroic, honourable or brave: there are going to be quite a few people left who are like that, scared all the time and pretty awful company.

Were Al and Najjid filling a role that was missing in the book, or more there to reflect society now?

Entirely the latter. I wouldn't presume to say there was anything missing from the book. It was entirely what it needed to be in this time and place. In 2008, they would be culturally part of that huge mass. It never occurred to me to do it any other way.

I felt having a child in the house was important, someone who actually played a genuine role, rather than sitting around the edges. I wanted Al to be seen to grow, and the way I felt a playboy, selfish sex god kind of character could grow was to be a parent, and be responsible. What led the relationship was him finding an annoying son that doesn't approve of him. I've always liked the sparky relationship between Ryan O'Neal and Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon – there was just a bit of that in there. Love becomes described through action. Al has learned that he can't walk away.

What can we look forward to in the second series?

We will be resolving the cliffhanger relatively quickly, at least one part of it. The whole story of the lab will certainly play through series two. There will be more about the backstory of the virus, and the lab's direct connection with that. Whether that will go beyond series two I don't know at the moment. All the characters are coming back, but I can't say for sure how long Paterson is back for because that's the cliffhanger.

One thing I'm very keen to do now we've established the show is explore those dilemmas week by week, and what the actual nitty-gritty of life will be like. We know that people are really interested in how they would cope themselves in certain situations. Anya's without all that stuff that she had before – is she still much of a doctor?

We'll certainly be looking week on week to keep the audiences at the heart of those dilemmas, and as the structure of the world begins to disintegrate, you'll see more of the world collapsing. It will gradually become more tribal, in the sense that people will form alliances and groups.

There are a lot of great stories about how the world came into being, and the job of Survivors is to tell them again in a way that makes people see them in a new context.